I hate to talk about the ipod again, because I feel like I have at least a hundred times, but I feel I must bring up the happenings of the past three weeks. I got a job, I finished my last semester at the University of Toronto, I wrote an exam, I went out with some old friends, I went out with some new ones, I watched some television, I made a new website, I began editing the first twenty pages of my next book, and I went to work. When I finally had a day yesterday where I literally did nothing but relax and reflect back on the last little while, I realized two things; I need to get a life, and I am never, ever, ever without my ipod. It’s to the point where ‘never leave home without it’ can’t even apply anymore, since I usually have it on my person when I’m just sitting around at home. It’s on me right now. Outside of the time where it’s charging, or when I’m charging, my ipod and I have been completely inseparable. I think I’ve got to take some time in this column to discuss what this possibly means to society.
Arguably, there’s two items people absolutely need when walking around in the world: a wallet, and a set of keys. The wallet is for storing money, identification, and pictures of loved ones. The keys are for when you want to leave the real world and come home. It’s fairly cemented in our heads that these are things we need. Just over five years ago, it became socially acceptable for absolutely everyone to own a cell phone (and soon after to replace it with a smaller one). This provides the essential human desire to communicate with others at a much more convenient and accelerated rate. Now, sure, there’s other stuff that people carry around, but these three things are fairly universal at this point. And while people have always carried around walkmans and CD players and even different makes of mp3 players, but never has it ever been a universally accepted item. Portable music has always fallen in the same category as lipstick and paperbacks. But has the ipod become the next set of keys?
Only in a community so solipsistic as Gen Y could the ipod become a required commodity, but there it is. The metaphor of the ipod being a key is pretty damn apt, too. Hit ‘music’ and there’s your soundtrack. Hit ‘photos’ and there’s your friends and family. Hit ‘video’ and there’s the newest episode of Laguna Beach that you downloaded last night. Hit ‘calendar’ and there’s your schedule. The fact is, this completely defines Gen Y. They are more than anyone else the MTV generation, because they don’t even look at it ironically. They are the sum of what they watch, what they listen to, and what they have to do tonight. And the ipod does all of this so easily you don’t even notice sometimes that you’ve been listening to it straight for fifteen hours.
The ease of the ipod is what gives it that zen quality. It’s so simple that it become another limb on your body with minimal adjustment. Michael Bull, a professor of new media, has written several lectures on the effect of the ipod, and states that Apple didn’t even see the importance of their machine coming; “Apple got it intuitively right. People use (the iPod) as an alarm clock, and when they listen to it at night, they like the fact it can turn itself off. It’s how people like to use music. I don’t think Apple did much research into how people would use their players, but they got most of it right.” This right here suggests that the ipod may be damn near progenous; an accident whose results proved miraculous and would change the world forever.
But progeny has little to do with Gen Y, a group of people who call their ipod’s part of themselves,” Markus Giesler, another new media professor, said. He went on to explain the psyche of ipod owners; “The iPod is no longer just an instrument or a tool, but a part of myself. It’s a body extension. It’s part of my memory, and if I lose this stuff, I lose part of my identity.” I might be wrong about this, but wasn’t it only 1999 when Brad Pitt stared through the fourth wall to proclaim, “You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet”? Since then, have we really become just that?
Does my ipod define me if I have music on it I don’t even know? Sure, because always finding new music is part of my personality. Does it define me that I have an episode of Grey’s Anatomy on there? Sure, because I like to show people just exactly how it’s a rip off of the much superior Scrubs. Does it define me if I’ve never used the calendar function? Sure, because that shows that I’m way too busy to write down everything I have to do. Does it define me if the battery is always dying? Probably more than any other point I’ve made so far.
Here’s an idea, however. Does the ipod define us or merely reflect us? Much like the mirror on the back of the case, we are not the ipod so much as the ipod is us. And because Gen Y is the ME generation, doesn’t it make complete sense to have the majority of them carrying around a mirror of everything they like?
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Shawn covers the weekend news.
I buy exactly one record this month and Toby has to beat me to review it. Dagnammit.
Gloomchen chimes in on, among other things, one of my favorite indie gals, Neko Case.
